Strictly speaking the post is not about 10 best cosmonauts but about cosmonauts involved in the first 10 successful Soviet space flights. Starting from the seventh the flights were not more individual so you'll find here more than 10 persons. Let's start.

1. Yuri Gagarin

First flight of a man into the space at the height of 327 kilometers lasting in total 108 minutes that have changed his life and life of our planet.

2. Gherman Titov was Gagarin's substitute for any unforeseen circumstances and afterwards was chosen to be the second Soviet man in space in 1961. He still holds a record - he was a youngest man ever been in space. At the moment of the flight he was 25.

3. Andriyan Nikolayev participated in the first joint flight of two space ships Vostok-3 and Vostok-4. For that time his flight was the longest - 94 hours and 25 minutes.

4. Pavel Popovich was the second cosmonaut of the mention first joint flight. He was the pilot of Vostok-4 and approached the partner space ship for 6 km.

I see they were really important people. I love space discovery. In space race CCCP was some time first, because won against american in risky means: example Gagarin couldn’t land in his capsule it was droped in other pod. First three people flought in 2 people capsule with costumes and other stuff removed. First walk in space (aka kosmos) was let me say cosmonaut fitted only after spacesuit little bit deflated. But you know first is first, it was little fool, but required great bravery. Hooray for Soviet cosmonauts.

Again, no mention of Vladimir Illushin… the son of the famous Soviet aircraft designer and the very best pilot the Soviet Union had. He held speed and altitude records and joined the cosmonaut corps a full year after Gagarin and the rest had already started. Within several months he had surpassed the earlier candidates and was in fact chosen before Gagarin to go up.

Illushin did in fact get sent up a week before Gagarin, unfortunately he crash-landed in China and was seriously injured. The Chinese kept him for about a year before returning him to Russia. The Soviet people were not told about this launch.

The only trouble was, the rest of the world knew that the Russia had sent someone up, and they needed a cover for the failed mission. That’s why a week later they sent up Gagarin who experienced nearly the same type of trouble on re-entry, but at least he managed to land in Russia, although he was several hundred kilometers off course.

Komarov was the first Soviet cosmonaut who died during his mission. The spacecraft he maned was not properly finished and tested. It was a political decision to launch it anyway and Komarov paid with his life for comrade Brezhnew´s vanity.

hi im from argentina and i really like russian history, its very lovely, interesting and sad, all the same time, im sure one day would be again the big nation that used to be….gloria to this men that put their life in dangerous for their mother russia and the whole planet Y_Y